The use of information technology in teaching humanitarian disciplines contributes to the formation of highly qualified, competitive specialists who can adapt to rapidly changing conditions, possessing a high level of development of critical and creative thinking, ready for professional self-development and self-improvement, for the implementation…

The for-profit sector of higher education has generated some disturbing headlines recently. Widely publicized charges of predatory recruiting practices have prompted new regulations and provided fuel for scorching criticism of the entire business model. But while the spotlight is focused on what for-profits are doing wrong, are people overlooking…

While there is nothing new about academic dishonesty, how it is committed, prevented, and detected has been dramatically transformed by the advent of online technologies. This article briefly describes the concurrent emergence of online writing assistance services and Web-based plagiarism detection tools and examines the implications of both for…

While recognizing that digital access is not evenly distributed in the United States, which is to say nothing of the global distribution, one can safely say that this transformation is already here; people are already at the moment in which the ability to use social media, and particularly social media as amplified through the power of the mobile…

Just a few years ago, virtual worlds were credited with the power to transform the universe. Used since the late 1990s in military and medical applications, virtual worlds first gained mainstream media attention when Linden Lab released Second Life in 2003. While other worlds, including open source environments, have launched since then (examples…

This article argues that the digital humanities can be seen as a humanities project in a time of significant change in the academy. The background is a number of scholarly, educational and technical challenges, the multiple epistemic traditions linked to the digital humanities, the potential reach of the field across and outside the humanities,…

The scholarly field of the digital humanities has recently expanded and integrated its fundamental concepts, historical coverage, relationship to social experience, scale of projects, and range of interpretive approaches. All this brings the overall field (including the related area of new media studies) to a tipping point where it has the…

This paper analyses the role of "disruptive" innovative technologies in higher education. In this country and elsewhere, Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) have invested significant sums in learning technologies, with Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) being more or less universal, but these technologies have not been universally…

This paper discusses how the use of digital technologies may support a shift of cultural practices in teaching and learning, to better meet the needs of 21st century higher education learners. A brief discussion of the changing needs of the learners is provided, followed by a review of the overall impact of digital technologies on teaching and…

Although the use of digital information technologies in education has become commonplace, there are few, if any, central guiding frameworks or theories that explicate the relationship between technology and learning practices. In this paper, I argue that such a theoretical framework can assist scholars and practitioners alike by working as a…

The critical literature abounds with examples of possible educational uses of Web 2.0 technology in which students become active participants in the production of knowledge through blogging, social networking, creation of podcasts, and other forms of constructivist education. At the same time, teachers, whom the data indicate are somewhat…

Purpose: This paper aims to discuss and provide examples of different collaborative models that are emerging and to argue that a technology-enhanced, socio-constructivist approach to future collaborative curriculum design and delivery enables partnership working and provides curriculum design solutions that supports delivery in different ways. The…

Two decades ago, many campuses mobilized a major effort to deal with a clear problem; faculty and students needed access to desktop computing technologies. Now the situation is much more complex. Responding to the current challenges, like mobile computing and social networking, will be ore difficult but equally important. There is a clear need for…

This article considers the uses and non-uses of digital technology by international distance learners. It draws upon data from in-depth interviews with 60 learners from around the world following distance education degree courses provided by a large UK federal university. The article focuses firstly on learners' descriptions of technology's role…

A major strand of science and technology studies in recent decades has related to the social construction of technology (SCOT) movement, whose adherents maintain that technological systems are determined just as much by social forces as by technological ones. Taking this SCOT notion as a starting point, and putting a focus on the user, this paper…